Linux and Open Source 2010 Prediction
Dr. Hellmuth Broda
Usage of Linux and open source solutions will continue to grow and become more acceptable for business critical applications. However, the majority of Linux use will be for web front-end presentation management in web servers, as opposed to key enterprise application development. Linux will see a large growth due to its ability to work with most virtualization platforms, including the mainframe. With Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor now supporting Linux, further resistance will fade.
The move to Linux will come largely at the expense of proprietary Unix systems, with Sun Microsystems, Inc. Solaris seeing the largest erosion, with its recent acquisition by Oracle. HP will be impacted next, with the anemic adoption of Itanium and migration off of PA-RISC leading to the erosion of HP-UX to Linux platforms. IBM will end up as the dominant Unix vendor, with continued investment in its Power architecture keeping AIX viable.
The migration to Linux will be led by Red Hat Inc. for most enterprises, with Novell Inc.’s SuSE Linux continuing to chase Red Hat. Small and medium companies will be the main users of "free" Linux systems, such as Debian and Ubuntu, with large enterprises avoiding them due to lack of large scale commercial support.
Linux will continue to be the dominant operating system for appliances, with a strong growth in the cell phone/smart phone market. The Google Android system will gain popularity as a competitor to the Apple iPhone, although Google's own Droid offering, Nexus One, was off to a poor start. Moreover, the lack of applications (currently by a more than 10:1 margin), will prevent major adoption until this application imbalance is corrected. Security vendors will also continue to rely on Linux-based kernels for various security applications.
In that open source middleware is mature, stable and well-supported, Experton Group expects elements of open source technologies will further penetrate commercial and enterprise software without hesitation. Java-based middleware will compete strongly with proprietary vendor stacks such as IBM's WebSphere and Oracle's Weblogic.